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Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, in accordance with the procedural rules of the Senate, voted against opening debate on the bill to leave open the opportunity to bring it to the floor at a later date.

GOP ranks hold against campaign bill

Senate Democrats failed to attract a single Republican vote on the DISCLOSE Act Tuesday, effectively defeating the bill and casting doubts over whether any campaign finance measure can pass the upper chamber before the November elections.

Aides in both the Senate and the House insist the legislation will come up for consideration again. But with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) painting the bill - which failed 57-41 - as detrimental to his conference, a packed legislative docket and contentious elections on the horizon, sending the DISCLOSE Act to the president's desk now appears to be a long shot at best.

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Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, in accordance with the procedural rules of the Senate, voted against opening debate on the bill to leave open the opportunity to bring it to the floor at a later date.

"There's no reason to rush toward trying to pass a piece of legislation that needs broad support and to get the policy right, constructing the approach right - and certainly not in time for this election," Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) told POLITICO, citing the years-long process of completing the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bill in 2002.

"One has to ask the question as why [Democrats] need to be driving this for this election. Perhaps it benefits their side more than it does ours, I don't know, but the fact is, we've got to get the policy right and it's not there yet."

Snowe had been a key target for Democrats pressing to push a bill that had the support of their full caucus. Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), who missed the vote Tuesday for a funeral, told Reid (D-Nev.) he would have supported cloture, according to leadership aides, but Snowe had little incentive to break with her party on a measure GOP leadership stood strongly against. Opening debate on the DISCLOSE Act would have pushed a small business jobs bill Snowe has been working on for months off the floor again.

"Right now we should be focusing on jobs and the economy and small businesses, but they want to continue to incorporate all these other issues at a time in which the overarching issue facing Americans today is high unemployment and the economy," Snowe said.

Despite the bleak outlook on securing 60 votes to break a procedural filibuster, Reid spokesman Jim Manley said Tuesday that the majority leader "intends to revisit the issue at some point later in the future."

A House Democratic aide close to the negotiations on the bill echoed what Senate staffers had earlier suggested: that the Senate should return to the issue in September, giving voters and independent groups time to pressure on-the-fence senators during the August recess while also drawing attention to Republicans' "siding with corporations" closer to Election Day.

"Quite frankly,I don't think it's a bad idea to bring this up again in September, when you give it a chance to crystallize the position of Democrats as standing for the public's interest and Republicans against it," the aide said. "You let this vote sit out there for six weeks in these senators' states - there are a lot of good government groups where this is their top priority - and you build an aggressive campaign highlighting these senators' votes on this and you pressure them to change their minds."